


city lights lay out

by musiclily88



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Don't hate me for that okay, F/M, Fast car, M/M, Tracy Chapman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-27 12:49:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12081387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musiclily88/pseuds/musiclily88
Summary: A snippet in the theme of Tracy Chapman's song "Fast Car."





	city lights lay out

**Author's Note:**

> So I decided to write a fic based on "Fast Car" by Tracy Chapman because apparently I HATE MYSELF.  
> Enjoy!
> 
> BTW THIS IS SET IN AMERICA somewhere I don’t fucking know where sorry pretend it’s like Middle America or wherever The Outsiders is set, but modern? Set it wherever you want, I don’t run your life.

Niall didn’t know what he was looking for, but it probably wasn’t Louis—Louis in a jean jacket trying to look tough, Louis with a cigarette dangling from his smirking mouth, Louis with his hair falling into his eyes. He had just come from the skatepark with Zayn, allegedly, but they shot each other looks that meant they’d probably just gotten high and attempted a few ollies before falling asleep in an alleyway, each clutching a 40-ounce.

Niall knew Zayn well enough to read him, but Louis was a relatively new contender in town. He claimed to be a drifter of sorts, blowing from place to place like dandelion seeds on the wind.

Well, Niall added that poetic tidbit, and all Louis really did was smile.

Zayn and Niall were townies more than not, friends nearly since birth, friends through the thinnest and the thickest of it. They saw one another through breakdowns, breakups, and a particularly nasty parental split-up that left Niall feeling orphaned.

Sometimes it suited Zayn, their living here, and sometimes it didn’t. Niall pretended that it suited him fine but he was itching for a way outta Dodge, any kind of ticket somewhere else. Working at a liquor store was no kind of ticket anywhere, as far as he saw it, and nothing much else was keeping him here anymore.

After his mom left, Niall quit school to take care of his dad. At the time, Greg had a pregnant Denise to think about and very few spare emotional or financial resources to speak of, so Niall got a job.

His father’s failing liver nearly took over his life, until his father’s failing liver failed.

So all that was keeping him in town was a diminishing amount of nostalgia for his parents’ house—long since sold to pay for his dad’s treatment—and some friends who weren’t any more connected to the place than he was.

They were all out at Zayn’s favorite bar, one he once stumbled into because he claimed that it belonged to Niall’s heritage, being named O’Flanagans. “That’s not really—” Niall tried to correct him, only to have Zayn hand him a glass of beer and demand he chug it.

They were regulars ever since.

But then there was Louis, and Louis was looking at him above an unlit cigarette—the image made Niall hot while also wanting to laugh a little—his long eyelashes fluttering up and down. Louis shoved his hands deep inside the pockets of his jean jacket, ducking his chin in.

Niall thought maybe he was trying to look bashful, and it made him laugh. Louis immediately bought him a drink, and then Niall returned the favor, and then they were both outside so Louis could actually smoke his cigarette.

“Hey, maybe we could—go somewhere,” Niall suggested, shrugging one shoulder. His apartment was shitty, but he lived alone, and his bed was comfortable and big enough for two.

“Make you a deal,” Louis offered in return, quirking up his lip as he extinguished his cigarette. “Race you to my car, and if you beat me, I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”

Even with his scarred-up leg, he beat Louis there by a mile, laughed, and told him to maybe stop smoking.

Louis rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. What have you got to show for yourself, then?”

“Got nothing to prove,” Niall said with a shrug, patting the hood of Louis’ car. “But let’s see what this baby can do.”

Louis sped away like a madman, Niall cackling loudly in the passenger seat.

:

It wasn’t easy. It was never easy. Niall never knew easy. He knew happiness, sure, knew how to laugh a bright laugh and how to love. But he never knew easy, never ever.

He thought maybe it was because he felt he needed to prove himself to the world, somehow, to prove he deserved more than a bed at the shelter and a job where no one looked him in the eye.

But then he went home to Louis, who was warm and forgiving and who also liked to laugh like the world would never die.

He thumbed gently at the dark circles under Niall’s eyes and offered to go for a drive.

:

Louis didn’t have a job, never seemed to have a job, but one night he showed up at the bar with fistfuls of cash, eyes wild.

“Please tell me you didn’t go rob a liquor store,” Niall asked, half-serious. “I work at a liquor store.”

“What? No,” Louis spluttered. “Why would I—no.”

“Cock fight?”

Louis swooped in to kiss Niall’s temple. “You’re beautiful and very, very wrong.”

“Tell me.”

“Horse racing!”

On their drive home that night, Niall nearly smashed clean into a telephone pole.

:

Their house was tiny but domestic, if a bit littered with bottles and cigarette butts. Niall got promoted, stashing away the extra bits from his paychecks until they had enough for a one-bedroom that had seen better days.

It was big enough until it wasn’t, not at all, with all of their clothes heaped together on top of furniture and all of their vinyl spread out over literally every room of the house.

It felt exceptionally smaller when Niall came back from work to find Louis sitting at the kitchen table biting at his fingernails and cuticles, nervous to the point of exhaustion.

Niall wanted to ask who died, but the words wouldn’t come.

“I, uh. Well, I’ve got a kid coming.”

He considered decking Louis, even when he heard that Louis’ thing with Briana was before his time and that their relationship was tumultuous. Niall looked around their little house, their little living room, eyeing the empty beer bottles and full ashtrays, and he plucked Louis’ car keys from his pliant hand and left.

He wanted to drive so fast he could maybe fly away.

:

Driving was catharsis, to an extent, especially when Freddie wouldn’t settle. Niall nestled him in the back and drove Louis’ car to hell and back, only to return to a different kind of hell at home.

He was living and dying every day, and it didn’t feel like a ticket out.

:

He sometimes had flashbulb memories of Louis’ arm curled around his shoulder, the car going so fast Niall felt a little drunk, the roads and lights passing them so fast that Niall started to laugh from fear. 

The city spilled out before them, some nights.

Some nights, though, Louis tossed a beer bottle at Niall’s head and Niall ran, trying to remember how to be someone, how to be himself, how to belong to someone and be happy.

Some nights, he thought he needed to leave or maybe he might die.

**Author's Note:**

> I swear to FUCKING god I don’t actually hate Louis, but the tone of my recent fics is making it seem so. I AM SORRY. I love him, he is a shining light, his smile graces me with more god-given joy than I know how to express. He is a talented tornado.


End file.
